How third-party delivery apps affect local restaurants

BAKERSFIELD, CA. — Most consumers have used a third-party delivery app to order from local restaurants during quarantine.

However, a percentage of your money is going to those delivery apps and not the restaurant themselves.

We spoke with the owner of Locale Farm to Table and the manager of La Costa on how these apps affect their revenue.

“I think I had 253 orders for the month of April, 23 came from GrubHub, 18 came from Yelp, and 3 were orders we delivered, but every other order came from our website," said Heather Laganelli, Locale Farm to Table owner.

Locale has a partnership with Yelp, who now owns GrubHub, for delivery and take out orders. The company charges a 12% service fee per order. A partnership the owner says made more sense before the pandemic when most of her customers were from out of town.

La Costa has a partnership with the competitor app, Uber Eats, which charges 30% for delivery orders and 15% for take out orders.

“It honestly has been worth it for us, you have to look at a lot of different things if you have Uber Eats," said Chelsea Lopez, Manager of La Costa. "It's more take out and boxes and different things but for us its been a good move."

Both restaurants agree an order through a third-party app is better than none at all. But, the grassroots version of calling the restaurant directly and paying in cash can bringa few extra dolalrs per order to the restaurant.